He celebrated the divine presence in the created world to such an extent that his language could almost slide into pantheism. Jonathan Edwards pushed the same edges in using the Platonic language of emanation to describe God’s relation to the world. He spoke of God’s glory as a refulgence that flows from the divine being into the world and back again to its luminary. Perry Miller noted that the Puritans were “always verging so close to pantheism that it took all their ingenuity to restrain themselves from identifying God with the creation.”25 The Reformed tradition has persistently discerned
...more
